FAQs

This page aims to answer any general questions you may have about positiveID software.

Help! I'm nore sure where to start!

Try calling our helpful, expert staff for advice – see our Support or Contact pages for more details, or alternatively try our Forums for more information.

I can only access the default card design, and all my regular card designs are Greyed out. Also/And/Or, my card comes out with SAMPLE written across it - what's going on?

positivID Professional, Workstation and Standard require a hardware key to work – it’s one of our security features to stop unauthorised users producing their own badges. It also ensures data is transmitted to our Bureau from an authorised user. The hardware key either attaches to the printer port of your computer or into one of the USB sockets, depending upon the type supplied.

The first thing to do is to check to make sure that the dongle is still attached, and that it is firmly in place (that it hasn’t been knocked). Very rarely these units fail, but we will gladly replace them free of charge if they are still under warranty.

I want to encode the magnetic strip on the back of my ID cards with the employee number that is currently printed on the front of the card. How can I do this?

Open your ID card in the card design package. Add a magnetic strip object to the card. When you do this the options menu for Mag Stripe will automatically open. You can now choose which track of the mag stripe you want to contain the relevant information (in this case the employee number).

Once done you can ‘OK’ out of the box to return to the card design where you will now need to re-save the design. You will also need to set the Mag Stripe configuration options on your printer driver. Don’t forget you will need to have a printer that supports magnetic encoding!

There are several remote sites in my organisation and it is not practical to get them all to come to head office when they need a new badge produced - can positivID help?

Yes, in fact there are several possible solutions to this problem. Firstly, each site could have its own copy of positivID (either Standard or Professional) with a printer at each site – this could be difficult to justify though!

Alternatively, head office could have a copy of Professional and a printer and each of the outstations could have a copy of Workstation. In this way each outstation captures the individuals details and sends them back to head office for printing. If your organisation does not want the expense of buying a PVC card printer the individuals details can easily be forwarded to our Bureau service and we can print the badges for you.